Tess Gerritsen - Body Double

“Nothing. The car was pretty tidy. I mean, except for the blood.”

“And all of it is from the victim?”

“It’s all B positive, anyway.”

Abe glanced at Yoshima. “You typed our gal yet?”

Yoshima nodded. “It matches. She’s B positive.”

No one was looking at Maura. No one saw her chin snap up, or heard her sharp intake of breath. Abruptly she turned so they could not see her face, and she untied her mask, pulling it off with a brisk tug.

As she crossed to the trash can, Abe called out: “You bored with us already, Maura?”

“This jet lag is getting to me,” she said, shrugging off the gown. “I think I’m going to go home early. I’ll see you tomorrow, Abe.”

She fled the lab without a backward glance.

The drive home went by in a blur. Only as she reached the outskirts of Brookline did her brain suddenly unlock. Only then did she break out of the obsessive loop of thoughts that kept playing in her head. Don’t think about the autopsy. Put it out of your mind. Think about dinner, about anything but what you saw today.

She stopped at the grocery store. Her refrigerator was empty, and unless she wanted to eat tuna and frozen peas tonight, she needed to shop. It was a relief to focus on something else. She threw items into her cart with manic urgency. Far safer to think about food, about what she would cook for the rest of the week. Stop thinking about blood spatters and women’s organs in steel basins. I need grapefruits and apples. And don’t those eggplants look good? She picked up a bundle of fresh basil and greedily inhaled its scent, grateful that its pungency swept away, if only for the moment, all the remembered smells of the autopsy lab. A week of bland French meals had left her starved for spices; tonight, she thought, I’ll cook a Thai green curry so hot it will burn my mouth.

At home she changed into shorts and a T-shirt and threw herself into preparing dinner. Sipped chilled white Bordeaux as she sliced chicken and onions and garlic. The steamy fragrance of jasmine rice filled the kitchen. No time to think of B positive blood and black-haired women; the oil’s smoking in the pot. Time to sauté the chicken, add the curry paste. Pour in the can of coconut milk. She covered the pot to let it simmer. Looked up at the kitchen window and suddenly caught a reflection of herself in the glass.

I look like her. Exactly like her.

A chill swept through her, as though the face in the window was not a reflection, but a phantom staring back. The lid on the pot rattled from the rising steam. Ghosts trying to get out. Desperate to get her attention.

She turned off the burner, crossed to the telephone, and dialed a pager number she knew by heart.

A moment later, Jane Rizzoli called. In the background, Maura could hear a phone ringing. So Rizzoli was not at home yet, but probably sitting at her desk in Schroeder Plaza.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” said Maura. “But I need to ask you something.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I just want to know one more thing about her.”

“Anna Jessop?”

“Yes. You said she had a Massachusetts driver’s license.”

“That’s right.”

“What’s the birth date on her license?”

“What?”

“Today, in the autopsy lab, you said she was forty years old. What day was she born?”

“Why?”

“Please. I just need to know.”

“Okay. Hold on.”

Maura heard the shuffling of pages, then Rizzoli came back on the line. “According to that license, her birthday’s November twenty-fifth.”

For a moment, Maura did not say anything.

“You still there?” asked Rizzoli.

“Yes.”

“What’s the problem, Doc? What’s going on?”

Maura swallowed. “I need you to do something for me, Jane. It’s going to sound crazy.”

“Try me.”

“I want the crime lab to run my DNA against hers.”

Over the line, Maura heard the other telephone finally stop ringing. Rizzoli said, “Tell me that again. Because I don’t think I heard you right.”

“I want to know if my DNA matches Anna Jessop’s.”

“Look, I agree there’s a strong resemblance-”

“There’s more.”

“What else are you talking about?”

“We both have the same blood type. B positive.”

Rizzoli said, reasonably: “How many other people have B positive? It’s like, what? Ten percent of the population?”

“And her birthday. You said her birthday’s November twenty-fifth. Jane, so is mine.”

That news brought dead silence. Rizzoli said softly: “Okay, you just made the hairs on the back of my arms stand up.”

“You see why I want it, now? Everything about her-from the way she looks, to her blood type, to her date of birth…” Maura paused. “She’s me. I want to know where she comes from. I want to know who that woman is.”

A long pause. Then Rizzoli said, “Answering that question is turning out to be a lot harder than we thought.”

“Why?”

“We got back a credit report on her this afternoon. Found out that her MasterCard account is only six months old.”

“So?”

“Her driver’s license is four months old. The plates on her car were issued only three months ago.”

“What about her residence? She had an address in Brighton, right? You must have spoken to her neighbors.”

“We finally got hold of the landlady late last night. She says she rented it out to Anna Jessop three months ago. She let us into the apartment.”

“And?”

“It’s empty, Doc. Not a stick of furniture, not a frying pan, not a toothbrush. Someone had paid for cable TV and a phone line, but no one was there.”

“What about the neighbors?”

“Never saw her. They called her ‘the ghost.’”

“There must be some prior address. Another bank account-”

“We’ve looked. We can’t find anything on this woman that dates back earlier.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” said Rizzoli, “that until six months ago, Anna Jessop didn’t exist.”

WHEN RIZZOLI WALKED INTO J. P. DOYLE’S, she found the usual suspects gathered around the bar. Cops, most of them, trading the day’s war stories over beer and peanuts. Located right down the street from Boston PD’s Jamaica Plain substation, Doyle’s was probably the safest watering hole in the city. Make one false move, and a dozen cops would be on you like a New England Patriots’ pile-on. She knew this crowd, and they all knew her. They parted to let the pregnant lady through, and she saw a few grins as she waddled in among them, her belly leading the way like a ship’s prow.

“Geez, Rizzoli,” someone called out. “You putting on weight or what?”

“Yeah.” She laughed. “But unlike you, I’ll be skinny by August.”

She made her way toward Detectives Vann and Dunleavy, who were waving at her from the bar. Sam and Frodo-that’s what everyone called the pair. The fat Hobbit and the skinny one, partners so long they acted like an old married couple, and probably spent more time with each other than they did with their wives. Rizzoli seldom saw the two apart, and she figured it was only a matter of time before they started dressing in matching outfits.

They grinned and saluted her with identical pints of Guinness.

“Hey, Rizzoli,” said Vann.

“-you’re late,” said Dunleavy.

“Already on our second round-”

“-You want one?”

Jesus, they even finished each other’s sentences. “It’s too noisy in here,” she said. “Let’s go in the other room.”

They headed into the dining area, toward her usual booth beneath the Irish flag. Dunleavy and Vann slid in opposite her, sitting cozily side by side. She thought of her own partner, Barry Frost, a nice guy, even a swell guy, but with whom she had absolutely nothing in common. At the end of the day, she went her way, Frost went his. They liked each other well enough, but she didn’t think she could stand much more togetherness than that. Certainly not as much as these two guys.